


The Enemy of My Enemy Is My Friend

by HK44



Series: The Chef, the Doctor and the Lawyer [4]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Self Harm, Trans Male Character, Trans!Naruto, everybody has trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:53:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23876479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HK44/pseuds/HK44
Summary: “I know how it ends,” Sasuke shot back, eyes snapping black and burned. “I don’t need to hear the rest.”Naruto stared at him. “Would it be easier for you to listen if I said someone did it to me instead of me carving these into my skin?”
Relationships: Gaara/Haruno Sakura, Gaara/Uzumaki Naruto, Haruno Sakura/Uzumaki Naruto
Series: The Chef, the Doctor and the Lawyer [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/744366
Comments: 4
Kudos: 32





	The Enemy of My Enemy Is My Friend

The coffee was tepid by the time he drank it. The case in front of them had taken up so much of his focus that it wasn't until his fingers grazed the cup while reaching for a pen that he even remembered he made it. Absentmindedly, he rubbed at his jawline, a little tired, a little winded.

This case was going to take  _ forever _ to finish.

And it was going to feel even worse with Sasuke just sitting there, staring at him, all black-eyed and hollow.

Naruto did not like Sasuke, even long before he knew what the other had done to Sakura. He was rude, standoffish and a major fucking dick. Having to sit across from him and work together was borderline torture. But as their professor had said, it was a decent exercise in Naruto's restraint. If he got to where he wanted to be as a lawyer, he'd work difficult cases with a myriad of people who tested his limited patience. 

Just something to work on. Get used to.

He ducked his head low behind his laptop and peeked over the edge, catching sight of Sasuke’s hard pressed gaze and scowled. Lifting his head up, chin held firm in defiance of anything that Sasuke could possibly be thinking about him, and,  _ oh _ , he knew there were  _ tons _ of mean thoughts, he snapped, “You gonna keep staring at me or actually work on this?”

Sasuke rolled his eyes. He spared no reaction to Naruto’s hissed tone and if  _ that _ didn’t piss him off to high heavens, Naruto didn’t know what would. “I am  _ working _ ,” he said, gesturing to his pages of notes on the case and twisting his laptop screen just enough to show off even more notes and annotations. “I was just curious.”

“About what?”

“How did you get them?” Sasuke asked. 

Naruto frowned and dropped his head, fiddling with his pen as he marked a little note from the computer to the book. “Get what?”

“The scars,” Sasuke said. He reached over and pulled down Naurto’s laptop screen, craning just a slight bit forward as though to get a better look. “They don’t look like accidents.”

There was a moment of panic that slithered down Naruto’s spine.

The thing was, he would be open and honest about everything. When he didn’t like someone, it was evident, whether he said it to their face or not. He didn’t cave from his emotions. He didn’t cower from his own feelings. He showed it all.

Just not that.

He could never rectify why he didn’t like talking about it. Could never quite put a finger on whether it was embarrassment or shame that twisted cold and heavy in his chest whenever the scars on his cheeks were asked about. Not that either of those feelings would’ve mattered. He was still embarrassed, still a little ashamed about the incident at the public pool when he was eight and yet he still talked about it.

But there was something deeper to this one, he guessed.

It was much more personal than accidentally freaking out from being touched and punching some guy into the water.

Only a few people he talked to regularly really knew the story behind the scars - his doctor at the time, his parents, his Uncle Kurama and Sakura. Even Gaara was unaware.

But then again, he’d never asked.

Which Naruto appreciated. It was nice to be taken as he was, with no questions about why he was the way he was.

Naruto lifted his head just enough to spy his eyes to Sasuke’s. He moved Sasuke’s hands from the computer and smiled thin. “If you must know, these scars-” He gestured to his face. “-aren’t scars. They’re a representation of the fact that I have a demon inside me.”

“A demon,” Sasuke said flatly.

“Yes.” Naruto nodded. “When I was but a young bab, I was super duper ill and so my parents struck a deal with a demon to keep me alive in exchange for its ability to roam free after I died and these scars just magically appeared because it’s a fox demon.” He paused then added, with a little smirk, “Cat- _ fox _ .”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever head,” Sasuke muttered, finally dropping his eyes to his book.

“Well, ask a stupid question,” Naruto hissed back, looking back to the case again. “Okay, so there’s no substantial  _ proof _ of physical ailment so we could-”

“Did you do it yourself?”

The mirror, framed with golden foxes, and his face, bloody and bloodier, tear-streaked but no longer crying, the pain numbing out every single feeling he’d ever felt as he twisted the knife’s hilt in his hand and his fingertips grazed the blade, cool and wet to the touch. Somewhere in the background, his father was shouting and someone was touching his arm. 

And in the mirror, he couldn’t see himself anymore.

He took a breath, snapping out of it quickly as his hand hit the half-drunk coffee mug. “That’s  _ none _ of your fucking business.”

“I’m just curious-”

“And I  _ said _ -” Naruto snarled, slowly lifting his head and making sure every enunciated word hit its mark as he stared Sasuke down “-that is  _ none _ of your  _ fucking _ business.”

Sasuke did not cower away but Naruto didn’t drop his gaze. Tension held between them on a thin, thin string.

It was easier. Every other time. When he was young and people asked, he spun a lie about demons, dragging out some tale that Kurama or his mother would tell him as a child. As he got older, he’d just say it was nothing and people accepted that and moved on. Sometimes if he felt like fucking with them he played the demon tale but every time, it was understood. It wasn’t a thing to be discussed.

Because if Naruto of all people, Naruto who’d yelled out into a fully populated bar about his hormones, who didn’t waste time on letting people know he was trans or that he was sad or  _ so so _ in love with his fiance and his boyfriend - if he didn’t want to talk about it, it was clearly nothing that needed to be discussed. Nothing he wasn’t going to talk about.

He was the chattiest person alive.

Silence indicated a personal seriousness that everyone so far has been hesitant to push on.

Everyone except for  _ Sasuke _ .

Finally Sasuke drew back, his gaze still focused. "Make it my business then."

He said the words so easily. Like he thought he was deserving of Naruto's past, thought he was allowed an insight into him.

"Just because people hand you everything on a silver  _ fucking _ platter whenever you bat your stupid eyes doesn't mean  _ I'm _ one of them, dickhead," Naruto snapped.

He was on the verge of punching the asshole.

Sasuke regarded him with cold eyes. His lips cracked a cruel grin. Too much teeth. "Maybe you should be."

Cold shock blasted at the back of Naruto's head. His first instinct was to leave, was to shout but the moment he opened his mouth, everything went sideways.

“I was a depressed kid, okay?” he said hotly. His voice cut dark. “I was the weird one. I didn’t know how to keep still, didn’t know how to shut up. I talked to myself a lot. I made up stupid stories.” He fiddled with his fingers, blinking rapidly as he tried to calm his hammering heart. He'd already started. No sense stopping now. “My parents were well known but my mother homeschooled me until I was eight so I didn’t have much social interaction outside of my family.

“My mom - she worried about me. I was born too premature. I didn’t understand normal conventions no matter how hard people tried to teach me. I wanted to touch everything, be around everyone. I just- I  _ liked _ things.” He wilted softly into himself. “But she’d moved to our town when she was young. There were people that hated her family and they threatened her life so her parents moved her away and she was still wary of them and the fact that I would just wander off with whoever grabbed my hand.”

“So you were an idiot?”

Suddenly remembering who he was talking too, Naruto scowled. “Do you want the fucking story or not?”

Sasuke shrugged but leaned back and gestured lightly for Naruto to continue.

He fisted his hands together and exhaled. “Halfway through the school year, she got piled on more work and couldn’t keep up with homeschooling me. My uncle Kurama was a family friend of hers and he tried to fill in but my dad-” Naruto frowned. “They don’t get along that well. Dad wound up winning the argument and I got placed in a regular school when I was eight.

“It was nice for a while. I knew Iruka from when he’d stop by and fill in the areas Mom didn’t understand and I liked playing with the other kids my age. But I didn’t get that when we played tag, they always picked me to be It so I wouldn’t have to hide with them. That the reason I always got to sit at the “special table” during lunch was because they didn’t want me to sit with them.”

He laughed, a sharp broken sound filtering from his mouth. "I mean. It makes sense, right? My parents were well-known in the town but I wasn’t. I was just the weird kid who had never been seen until now. They spread these rumors that I was defective...”

His voice trailed off into a whimpering silence. The things they said, things he overheard in the bathroom, things he didn’t know were thought about him.

They hated him so much and he never understood why.

In front of him, Sasuke shifted, as though to say something and Naruto snapped out of it. He cleared his throat. “When I realized that no one liked me and that no matter how hard I would try to make friends I would always be annoying and no one would care, I started doing things on my own more. I knew my mom would’ve immediately begin worrying all over again if I came home telling her I had no friends so I- I fudged the truth a little. And Iruka- I made sure he was always too busy dealing with something stupid I was doing to realize that I was alone all the time.

“The only person I ever told about it was Kurama. But- ya know, he was a weird guy too so he couldn’t help. But he’d-” Naruto leaned back. “You know when you’re a kid, and you’re small and stupid and you think everything is real and that if you run fast enough and jump at the right moment, you might be able to fly?”

Sasuke’s eyes fell close and he pinched the bridge of his nose before pulling back and gesturing loosely. “Sure.”

Naruto rolled his eyes. “Whatever. Kids do that - I’ve seen them. Anyway, when I was younger, Kurama used to tell me these stories about a cat or a fox prince, it would always change, and when I told him about everything, how sad I was young, how miserable, he took this marker and drew these little whiskers on my cheeks and told me I was the fox prince and I was just as brave as they were and as long as I had these markings, it meant I could handle anything. And I believed it because I was a kid.”

A slow dawn of realization lit up in Sasuke’s eyes. His hand fell to his lap. “Oh.”

Grim and watery, Naruto smiled and nodded. “Yeah. So one day I tried to use my new found powers to get some friends. They yelled at me. They said I was stupid, useless, pathetic. That I wasn’t supposed to be born, that no one liked me. They made me cry. I wound up running home, just wanting to disappear. Iruka tried to stop me but I was always fast and he couldn’t grab me. My parents were out working. I was alone.

“And I just went to the bathroom because I knew he’d have to call them and I knew they’d come home to see if I was there and I knew they’d panic if they saw me crying and so I  _ thought _ -” A sharp bubble of laughter fell from his lips. “I thought if I cleaned myself up, they’d never know. But when I looked in the mirror, I saw the marker had streaked and I realized.” He bit his lip and leaned back then exhaled shakily. “I realized I was not a brave warrior prince. And I was just me. Pathetic Naruto that was too weird for anyone to like.”

He swallowed thickly. “My dad bought a soap dish when they just moved into the house but it was too small for any soap they bought so he’d cut the bar in half and store it for later. We’d run out of soap that morning. Which mean he’d gone out to grab a new one. Which meant he’d left the knife right there, on the counter.”

“Okay,” Sasuke breathed. His fingers were clenched tight into a fist, arms tensed as he leaned away. Finally he wasn't looking at Naruto like Naruto was blessed to be even worthy of his time. "I get it. I understand.”

Naruto scowled. “You wanted to hear it.”

“I know how it ends,” Sasuke shot back, eyes snapping black and  _ burned _ . “I don’t need to hear the rest.”

Naruto stared at him. “You want to know everything about everyone,” he said after a beat. “But you don’t understand empathy. Do you?” He dropped his voice. “Would it be easier for you to listen if I said someone did it to me instead of me  _ carving _ these into my skin?”

To that, Sasuke said nothing. He finally just dropped his gaze.

“I took the knife,” Naruto went on. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if it had never been there. Probably just washed my face and tried not to cry while I waited for someone to show up. But it was there and I took it and I  _ cut _ into my own face until I thought I’d gone deep enough to make sure the marks would stay forever. And then I did it  _ five _ more times.

“They got home together. It was the first time I’d heard them fight. While they were driving me to hospital to get cleaned up, to get bandaged. To be fixed. They argued the whole way there, screaming at each other for not knowing, for letting Kurama tell me those stories, for blaming him in the first place.” He rubbed his hands together. “After I got cleared from the hospital and my new therapist okayed it, Dad took me up to his old college professor Jiraya, who taught me out of his house until I was fifteen. The wounds took three months to stop scabbing, maybe less if I didn’t keep picking at them but the scars have been there ever since.”

Sasuke nodded slowly. “You were medicated?”

“Heavily,” Naruto said. “For two months and then they dropped the dosage every few weeks until I was no longer seen as a threat to myself. I stopped being on medication when I was ten. Stopped therapy when I was thirteen. Stopped cutting myself in places people couldn't see when I was fourteen. Been tempted but haven't done it since, which is a lot harder than it sounds.” He fiddled with his pen, spinning around on top of his papers. “Are you happy now?”

For a moment, Sasuke was quiet. And then, “For now.”

Naruto rolled his eyes. “You’re such a fucking dick.”

“Maybe, but at least I didn’t carve whiskers into my face because of it,” he said back, voice cool as can be.

There was this brief moment of sudden and cold calm that hit Naruto at the start of his spine and spread throughout his whole body. It happened when he first walked into a men’s restroom and was called out on it. It happened when Lee told him about the attacker who’d broken him into tiny pieces, almost killed him.

It happened when Sakura first told him about her past with Sasuke.

And in a flash it was gone, leaving behind red hot rage. Naruto grit his teeth and roughly began shoving his things into his bag. “Fuck off,” he snapped. He snapped his laptop shut and shoved it into his backpack. “You were a dick and you got a girl who’d been nothing but  _ loving _ to you  _ hurt _ ,  _ broken _ until she couldn’t fucking talk about it without needing to be hitting something. Half her goddamn therapy was spent at a boxing ring.

“You wanted the fucking story. You don’t get to dismiss me because of it, shit-for-brains. You spent your shitty life at the bottom of a drug pit and just barely survived. At least I got out still standing.” He shoved roughly out of his chair and slung his bag over his shoulders. “I’ll send you my half tonight. Don’t ever fucking talk to me again.”

He stormed out of Sasuke’s immaculate apartment, down the stairs and out the door only to find it pissing rain.  _ Fucking bullshit. _

Under the safety of the doorway, he tore open his bag, rifling rapid through it for an umbrella. 

_ Nothing. _

Distantly he could Gaara's voice echoing at him to remember to bring it with him  _ just in case _ . Dammit. He resisted the urge to bang his face against the wall and pinched the bridge of his nose.

Gaara was working and never checked his phone during work hours. Sakura was at lunch with her mother a clear two hour drive away. The bus along this route wasn't even running. 

It'd be shorter to just walk home in the rain rather than wait for Sakura to come pick him up or to even walk to the closest bus stop with a working bus route.

He closed his eyes.

At least the rain would feel cool on his heated skin.

“You need a ride?” Sasuke drawled behind Naruto.

Jerking roughly at his sudden appearance, Naruto sent him a scathing look and zipped up his bag, hefting it over his head. “Not from  _ you _ .”

“Don’t be  _ stupid _ ,” Sasuke said. “If you go out there, you’ll get sick and if you die, Sakura will definitely kill me over it and of all the things to murder me for, this isn’t worth it.” He jerked his head towards the parking lot doorway. “This way.”

Naruto considered it, defying him and running out. But he was right. If he got sick and died, Sakura would probably attack Sasuke for not taking him home then curse out Naruto’s corpse for being an idiot. If he got sick and lived, then she’d just curse him out to his face.

There were better ways to spend his time with her than grovelling his way back into their bed.

He followed Sasuke through the door and down the stairwell into a dimly lit parking area. Sasuke swung open the door to his car and slid into the driver’s side. Naruto went around the long way and heaved himself into the passenger side. Sasuke started the engine and slowly began backing out.

As they left the parking lot, the loud bang of the garage door sliding shut, Naruto felt a little calmer. Sure, Sasuke was a complete  _ ass _ but rain was always the best thing. It hit the metal of the car and pinged off the glass windows, sliding down and encroaching the world with a shaky film.

Naruto tilted his head back and watched the drizzle slide down his window.

“I’m sorry,” Sasuke said so quiet Naruto was pretty sure he hallucinated it. “I don’t-” He faltered and gave up. “I’m sorry.”

He kept quiet. There was nothing he would ever forgive Sasuke for. Misgendering him on purpose. Hurting Sakura. Being an asshole to everyone he met just because he had a vaguely pretty face and could get away with it.

Sasuke sighed. “You were lucky. You didn’t grow up with people. Your lack of understanding people can be explained away.” He turned a corner. “Mine can’t.” His fingers tightened over the wheel. “I’ve always had…  _ anger _ issues. I don’t always control what I say.” For a moment, it seemed as though that was it but then he added, quickly and deathly quiet, “But Sakura used to say it’s not always what you say, it’s how you react to it.”

She did say that. To Naruto once. When they were at a bar and newly dating and the waitress let them know girl’s nights were on Wednesdays. When Naruto shifted, explained that he wasn’t a girl, and the waitress's eyes snapped wide open. She apologized quickly and sent over a free drink later on.

Even as they ventured home, Naruto had still felt sour about it, about not passing as much as he’d wanted. A whole year of T and all people could still see was a butch, deep-voiced lesbian. It

But Sakura had murmured that in his ear and then proceeded to make him feel better for the next three hours. And he kept it in mind in all his future interactions. How quickly someone went out of their way to rectify the mistake. And he could see it in himself and his thoughts. Things he would think to himself that were mean that he’d immediately rear back on.

It wasn’t always what you thought or what you said but rather your reaction to those things that showed how you were. The initial thought could be an accidental bias, a slip. The reaction was the work towards getting better.

“She might have said it once,” Naruto muttered.

“I was stupid with her,” Sasuke said. “I shouldn't have been. I shouldn't have been with you either.” 

Without hesitation, Naruto said, “I was going to kill you. When she told me what happened.”

“I believe you,” Sasuke admitted.

She'd been so angry at Sasuke that day and he'd gone off, ignoring her. When she vanished, Naruto had the last feeling of where she could've gone and couldn't rest until she got back.

It dawned on him in the hours after her confession, when they were both awake and breathing in each other's presence, that he'd never really asked her why she fought the way she did. He never speculated the reason. All he really ever focused on were the bruises and scars that lingered on her skin in the aftermath and how much he hated the way she'd come home every so often, bloodied and aching but raring and ready to go out again.

And when she'd told him, after he checked her out and fell sullen to the chair in their cramped kitchen and simply asked why, why she went out when he'd begged her to stop, why she went out if she wasn't intending to fight, why she bothered when she'd promised not to, his immediate goal was to storm out of the house and tear Sasuke into little pieces.

Naruto could handle the abuse Sasuke dished out. It was menial, minor, nothing he hadn't experienced

But Sakura did not deserve it. Didn't deserve the snubs nor the beating.

"You would've deserved it," Naruto muttered.

"I still do," Sasuke admitted. He didn't move his eyes from the road but his fingers went tight around the steering wheel. His whole body was grim. He inhaled tersely, as though he couldn't remember how. "I suck."

Naruto couldn't disagree with that. With any of it. 

Instead he closed his eyes and leaned his head on the cool pane of the car window. The rain echoed like thunder in his head. It was a grounding sound.

"I shouldn't have asked," Sasuke said halfway through the drive. "I shouldn't have pushed. I'm sorry."

"Are you though?" Naruto slid up, looking over to him. "I don't think you are."

Sasuke didn't say anything, just tensed up again. His eyes were dark, face guarded. He'd been caught. He didn't know how to deal with it.

"I think you're sorry about Sakura but nothing else," Naruto said slowly. He didn't dare pull away from Sasuke's face. "You don't know how to be sorry. You just mimic things, other people. What you think is required." He flexed his fingers. "You're good at copying, I'll give you that.

"You know you shouldn't have bothered and you know you were an asshole and that you're supposed to apologize but you don't mean it because you don't know how to mean it." Naruto sighed and finally drew his eyes away, slow and meaningful. "You don't know how to mean anything, do you?"

Sasuke didn't say anything for a couple of minutes before he grit out, "I'm learning."

Naruto ignored that. "Are you sorry?" 

The silence stretched between them, painful. So thick that he could've reached out and pushed his hands into it.

Then, "No."

"Do you regret asking?"

"No."

Naruto stared at him. "Why did you?"

Sasuke pulled up behind a black sedan. The car sat in an idle. The purr of the engine hummed beneath them. Like the sound of the rain, the sensation was grounding. Soothing.

"I had to know," he said slowly. "I… I need to know things."

"Why?"

"I don't know." Almost defeated, his hands dropped from the steering wheel. "My sponsor, Kakashi - he has some ideas. That it's my way of dealing with developing healthy addictions, that I spent so long not learning people I've gone overboard into knowing everything about everyone. But he's wrong. 

"I-" He faltered, stilling like a statue and going as silent as one.

The rain hit harder around the car and he flipped the windshield wipers to go faster. The movement was automatic, barely noticed. It only caught Naruto’s focus by the click. Everything about this situation seemed like swimming through sludge. Thick, heavy and unnatural.

He felt tired just speaking but knew if he didn’t keep going, if they didn’t keep going, he’d never surface. He’d drown.

They’d both drown.

Behind them, a car horn beeped. It jolted them both. Sasuke snapped to attention, his eyes narrowing as he looked in the rear view mirror, angry, annoyed. Naruto sat up straighter, shifting until his seatbelt stopped digging into his throat. The conversation lingered in the back of his mind but he wasn’t like Sasuke. He couldn’t just start pushing someone to talk about something tense or upsetting or difficult.

He was curious about people too, wanted to know things. 

But he wasn’t an ass.

Meanwhile Sasuke never once looked at him. His body never relaxed. He stayed tense, eyes focused on the road. He was done.

After a few minutes, they finally pulled up into the parking lot outside Naruto’s apartment. It wasn’t underground or had the luck of being covered. He squinted out the window, rifling through his bag for something to cover his head and his keys. For a moment, he considered throwing his jacket over the top of his head while he booked it to the front door.

As he wound his keys around his wrist, feeling the metal and rigid edges bump against his fingertips, he zipped up his bag.

The door locked as soon as he put his hand on the door handle. 

Panic built in his chest. The preparation for a fight sprouted and it took him a moment to squash it while he turned to Sasuke, who sat there still and frozen, his finger on the automatic lock. When he didn’t move, Naruto leaned across him to unlock his door. The moment he did, Sasuke’s finger pushed it back into a lock. The two argued without words on whether or not the door should be locked before Naruto’s patience vanished three pushes in and he was tempted to punch his way through the window and leave that way.

“Uh, hey. What the fuck, man?” he said, pushing the lock button one more time. The door unlocked before it snapped back to lock with Sasuke’s rigid push.

Sasuke bared his teeth in a forced grin. “I think I need to know everything because I don’t know how to be a person,” he said. The door unlocked. Without looking at Naruto or even moving his gaze from where it was focused on the shrub straight ahead, he leaned over and shoved open the door with one hand. Rain pattered against Naruto’s thigh. He drew back slowly, never once making any kind of eye contact, so stiff and still, not so much as coming anywhere close to grazing Naruto’s skin or clothes or even his bag. “I expect your half before midnight tonight. Now get out.”

Naruto grabbed the door handle and slammed the door shut so hard, he was surprised the windows didn’t break or that his hand wasn’t immediately severed from his wrist. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I think I just said it.” There was something wrong with his voice. Naruto’s stomach flopped at the recognition of the sound. Sasuke pushed back suddenly, his door flying open. 

He didn’t slide, didn’t glide, didn’t move smoothly like he had the entire time Naruto had known him, even when he was on drugs and so high his breathing was laboured and every inch of his body shifted like it hurt him. Instead, he stumbled out of the car and landed on his hands and knees, jerky and painful.

Then he was running across the parking lot.

Naruto had no idea what was happening but he threw his bag into the backseat of the car, grabbed the keys and ran off, making sure to shut both doors on his way after Sasuke, his nemesis.

His nemesis in crisis.

The rain was pounding ice cold against his skin but he carried through anyway. He’d run home from Jiraya’s every afternoon, rain or shine, to make it before it got too dark and while he hadn’t had need to do that since he was fourteen, he found himself easing into his usual patterns. The burn of his muscles, keeping his breaths low and even, moving with sure steps, staying balanced against the slick pavement.

Ahead of him, Sasuke was struggling. His steps were too wild, his feet hitting too hard. Finally he stopped, the rain weighing against him, and dropped to his knees.

Naruto slowed behind him. He stayed at a distance but close.

It was an unfortunate instinct of his to help people. No matter what, it called out to him. Someone who was in pain or struggling, he desired to fix them. He was no good medically. Even after being on T for years, needles still freaked him out and the idea of cutting into someone unnerved him with the possibility of a relapse back into old habits.

That was the reason he sought out being a lawyer aside from the prestige and proving everyone wrong. Even if he got the worst client ever, there was a part of him that urged to  _ fix _ , to heal. That maybe he could set them on the right path. That maybe, one day, he could set the world on the right path.

It was what was stilling him here behind a man who’d hurt his fiance, who’d been so cruel his boyfriend’s services had been entertained by a couple of people. It was what made him not want to turn around and leave even though all logic said he should.

It didn't matter if he'd changed or was trying to. He was irredeemable. 

But Naruto had never been so mean as to deny someone in need.

"Are you okay?" he yelled around the thundering raindrops.

Sasuke stared at his palms before fisting them against his knees and roughly dragging himself up to a teetering stand. He turned to Naruto looking drowned. Physically. Emotionally. 

"I need Kakashi," he said.

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting in my goddamn drive as a draft since for fucking ever. Idk when I'll finish it but I'm tired of it just sitting there so here it is. Enjoy or don't, no sweat off my back.


End file.
